Guests at Saturday’s Black Tie and TAILS fundraiser congregated around white-clothed tables in the Barsema Hall basement while sharing shrimp and veggies for hors d’oeuvres.

TAILS executive director Beth Drake and president Wendy Menard announced future plans to add new facilities to their current property at 2250 Barber Greene Road.

Currently, dog training classes take place either in the TAILS parking lot or, in cases of bad weather, the main lobby.

What TAILS hopes to do with the new facilities is to have a place for dog training, doggie daycare and space for future educational seminars that TAILS or anyone else may like to put on, Menard said.

“This has been an incredible journey. We have reached many miles, but there’s just so much more we could and want to do for animal welfare in our community,” Menard said.

TAILS is looking for those who would like to sponsor them through a room-naming campaign.

Currently they have rooms that will be named annually for different prices, as well as a lifetime option, to raise money to build the new facilities.

“[We] will build as soon as we can find the people that share our vision,” Menard said.

Melanie Magara, assistant vice president of public affairs at NIU and Sycamore resident, is excited about Rockefeller, the 2-year-old black Labrador mixed breed she and her family adopted from TAILS.

TAILS humane investigators found Rockefeller abused and abandoned. TAILS staff member Ellen Warpinski worked with Rockefeller to gain his trust so a family such as Magara’s could adopt him again.

“Dogs have been through so much stress, it’s not fair to do anything but love them. Even for animals who have not been abused, the stress of changing homes is enough for an animal,” Warpinski said.

Mark Spreyer, executive director of Illinois’ Stillman Nature Center, later entertained and caught the audience’s attention with a live red-faced screech owl, barn owl and grey horn owl, and presented information on the ability of some owls to turn their heads 270 degrees around or puff their feathers up when spotted at night.

In addition to the live owl presentation, CEO and president of the U.S. Humane Society Wayne Parcelle talked about the experiences of many who were separated from and worried about their pets in the Hurricane Katrina and Rita disasters, as well as current national issues.